Thurber Wade, the Hopes, Clarence, Geoff, Marian, and Alice made a party of nine, and it was hard work indeed to squeeze so many into the tiny dining-room of No. 13.  The very difficulties, however, made it all the jollier.  Clover’s cream-toast,—­which she prepared before their eyes on the blazer,—­her little tarts made of crackers split, buttered, and toasted brown with a spoonful of raspberry jam in each, and the big loaf of hot ginger-bread to be eaten with thick cream from the High Valley, were pronounced each in its way to be absolute perfection.  Clarence and Phil kindly volunteered to “shunt the dishes” into the kitchen after the repast was concluded; and they gathered round the fire to play “twenty questions” and “stage-coach,” and all manner of what Clover called “lead-pencil games,”—­“crambo” and “criticism” and “anagrams” and “consequences.”  There was immense laughter over some of these, as, for instance, when Dr. Hope was reported as having met Mrs. Watson in the North Cheyenne Canyon, and he said that knowledge is power; and she, that when larks flew round ready roasted poor folks could stick a fork in; and the consequence was that they eloped together to a Cannibal Island where each suffered a process of disillusionation, and the world said it was the natural result of osculation.  This last sentence was Phil’s, and I fear he had peeped a little, or his context would not have been so apropos; but altogether the “cream-toast swarry,” as he called it, was a pronounced success.

It was not long after this that a mysterious little cloud of difference seemed to fall on Thurber Wade.  He ceased to call at No. 13, or to bring flowers from his mother; and by-and-by it was learned that he had started for a visit to the East.  No one knew what had caused these phenomena, though some people may have suspected.  Later it was announced that he was in Chicago and very attentive to a pretty Miss Somebody whose father had made a great deal of money in Standard oil.  Poppy arched her brows and made great amused eyes at Clover, trying to entangle her into admissions as to this or that, and Clarence experimented in the same direction; but Clover was innocently impervious to these efforts, and no one ever knew what had happened between her and Thurber,—­if, indeed, anything had happened.

So May came to St. Helen’s in due course, of time.  The sand-storms and the snow-storms were things of the past, the tawny yellow of the plains began to flush with green, and every day the sun grew more warm and beautiful.  Phil seemed perfectly well and sound now; their occupancy of No. 13 was drawing to a close; and Clover, as she reflected that Colorado would soon be a thing of the past, and must be left behind, was sensible of a little sinking of the heart even though she and Phil were going home.

CHAPTER XI.

THE LAST OF THE CLOVER-LEAVES.

Last days are very apt to be hard days.  As the time drew near for quitting No. 13, Clover was conscious of a growing reluctance.